3 question interview: Debbie Moon

Here is the fourth micro interview with guests who will be speaking at our upcoming  Wolves and Apples event. Wolfblood’s Debbie Moon answers our three searching questions.

1. What was your favourite book when you were a child, and why?
The Grey King, by Susan Cooper. A heady mix of Welsh myth and legends in a 1970’s setting, full of dark lords, strange boys with golden eyes, magical creatures, and a powerful sense of the landscape of north-west Wales. It had such a profound impact on me that I ended up moving to Wales as an adult!

2. What is your top writing tip?
The best advice I was ever give was “don’t get it right, get it written”. A completed story gives you security. You can rewrite, reorganise, throw out whole sections, and yet always have the original version to refer to or revert to. A half-written story can’t be polished or perfected, because you don’t know what it is yet. So get it finished, however terrible you think it is, and then you can whip it into shape.

3. What is the best thing about writing for children?
Probably their enthusiasm for stories. Children experience so much of the wider world through stories, and they embrace them passionately, and get very attached to characters and relationships within them. Adults may treat television as wallpaper, there but ignored: children almost never do.